This is a 371 of PCT/EP00/05534 filed Jun. 15 2000 (intentionally filing date).
The invention relates to the use of a strip of tape material, which is provided at both ends with holes, as a suspension loop for sausages or the like, which loop can be fastened at a terminal sealing element of the sausage. It furthermore relates to the sealing of an end of a sausage with such a suspension loop and to a method for producing such a loop.
Various suspension loops, which facilitate the handling, for example, of sausages during the treatment steps (boiling, smoking, etc.) that follow the filling process and, moreover, the handling during the subsequent storage, are known. At the present time, they frequently consist of endless, knotted string. When the sausage is sealed, this string can be suspended, for example in a clip, which surrounds the end of the sausage skin, which has been gathered into a pigtail (DE-A-197 00 891.7). Furthermore, dimensionally stable, plastic, injection-molded suspension loops, such as those known from DE-A-2 913 495, have become known. Along the edge of the loop, the latter have a scale, on which the production date of the sausage may be marked. The German patent 1,632,140 discloses the suspension loop, which is addressed above, in the form of a folded-over tape, which has the width of the gathered end of the sausage skin and is thickened at its ends into beads, which are intended to prevent the loop slipping out of the sealing element.
New regulations and consumer expectations not only require that the production date be given on the product itself, but also that information be provided concerning the nature of the particular product, the constituents used for its production, the manufacturer and other relevant data. For this purpose, additional label tags can be provided, which are attached to the sealing element next to the suspension loop when the sausage or the like is sealed and are suitable for being printed with the information in question. It is obvious that such a procedure is expensive and increases the risk of breakdowns during the production of sausage. The latter is also the case for the aforementioned tape-shaped suspension loop, namely when the end beads stand in the way of fastening them to the pigtail-like gathered ends of the sausage skin (as well as in the way of an immediate printing before the processing).
It is an object of the invention to counter these disadvantages of the state of the art. For this purpose, a strip of tape material is used pursuant to the invention as a suspension loop and is provided at both ends with holes, which, when the strip is folded over, lie over one another and into which the (still not yet closed) sealing element is introduced. In this way, the initially described function of a suspension loop is combined with that of a label, which can hold extensive information in a single uniform and, at the same time, simple element. Moreover, this can easily be stocked up in magazines and supplied for processing to an automatic sausage-filling system.
Strips of tape materials with terminal holes are known as covering for inscriptions on filing pins. Their size (distance between the holes) is standardized and generally too small to be used in the inventive sense; moreover, this different type of use did not suggest itself. The same thing also applies to methods for furnishing the end of the sausage (or the like) with such a suspension loop and to sealing the end of the sausage itself, which is provided with a suspension loop.
Advantageously, the tape material is composed of a plastic, which can be printed. It may be constructed as a multi-layer composite film.
In the interests of greater stability and a higher load-bearing capacity, the strips can be reinforced at least in the regions, surrounding the holes. In these regions, at least one of the surfaces, facing one another in the folded-over state of the strip, can be coated with a pressure-sensitive adhesive, in order to ensure that the holes are aligned when the sealing element is introduced. The pressure-sensitive coating can also function as a bonding agent for magazining on a supporting tape.